The 2013 conference will explore how legal tradition influences lawyers and the law, in both international and domestic contexts. Law does not develop in a vacuum; it is shaped by the intellectual, cultural and linguistic backgrounds of those who create and administer it. In a world where legal systems increasingly interact, the enduring power of legal tradition necessitates a constant recalibration of theoretical and practical tools to deal with diversity.
Judge Abdulqawi A. Yusuf of the International Court of Justice will deliver the keynote address. Other highlights include a keynote debate between Professor Alain Pellet (Paris Ouest, Nanterre-La Défense) and Professor James Crawford (Cambridge), moderated by Professor Catherine Redgwell (UCL), on continental and Anglo-Saxon traditions in pleading before international courts; and a guest lecture by Professor H. Patrick Glenn (McGill), recipient of the Grand Prize of the International Academy of Comparative Law, on ‘The State as a Legal Tradition’.
The CJICL welcomes a wide variety of proposals in the field of international and comparative law, including empirical approaches, theoretical discussions and perspectives from practice. Examples of panels include:
– Dealing with diversity in the global practice of law, including: asset recovery in foreign jurisdictions; competing views on rules of procedure and evidence in international arbitration; the common law/civil law divide in international criminal trials; proliferation of international and regional jurisdictions.
– National legal traditions in an international context, including: implementation of international law in diverse domestic contexts; legal tradition and the teaching of law; extraterritorial application of domestic law; transboundary judicial interaction.
– Legal traditions and human rights, including: religious rights and the freedom of expression; the right to democracy and the Arab spring; traditional practices and universal human rights; jurisdiction, immunities and extradition.
– International law as a tradition, including: defining an international rule of law; local and regional custom; general principles of law in a diverse world; an international legal lexicon?
– Untraditional approaches to law, including: wordfare in legal scholarship; critical approaches to international law; resisting legal tradition; women and the law.
– The creation of legal tradition, including: the rule of law in post-conflict societies; transplanting legal tradition; non-state actors and the making of legal tradition; judicial activism in international and domestic courts.
Abstract submissions must be no longer than 300 words in length and should be accompanied by a brief biography or CV. Please submit your documents via [email protected].
The closing date for submissions is 15 January 2013. Successful applicants will be informed by 1 February 2013 and must submit their papers by 1 May 2013. Conference papers should be no longer than 10,000 words, including footnotes.
Selected papers will be considered for publication in the forthcoming conference issue of the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law.
General registration for the conference will open in early February 2013 on our website, www.cjicl.org.uk.